Into December and the St Nicholas Eve edition of Whewell’s Gazette the weekly #histSTM links list bringing its readers all of the histories of science, technology and medicine that we could chase up around the Internet over the last seven days.

We all live in the nuclear age, a period that on the grand scale is surprisingly short. Although the ancient Greek atomists hypothesised fundamental particles of matter sometime around the sixth century BCE the theory, which drifted in and out of fashion, remained purely speculative until John Dalton began to put it on a scientific footing at the beginning of the nineteenth century.

Even after Dalton the theory remained controversial until the early twentieth century when various people such as Henry Moseley and Niels Bohr put it onto a more solid footing. Around the same time Henri Becquerel and Pierre and Marie Curie began to investigate and explain radioactivity and radioactive decay.

Things picked up at this point and famously on 12 September 1933 Leó Szilárd discovered the principle of the nuclear chain reaction whilst waiting at a traffic light on the corner of Southampton Row in London. On 2 December 1942 to quote Gene Dannen, “Leo Szilard’s ‘impossible’ vision of a nuclear chain reaction became a reality” when Enrico Fermi fired up the world’s first nuclear reactor at the University of Chicago’s sports arena

From here the physicists and the engineers would go on to develop both nuclear weapons and civil nuclear energy. The former have always been damned but the latter has been both regarded as a blessing and a curse. Today, for example, China is following an aggressive policy of nuclear power expansion, whilst Germany, following the Fukushima disaster, has decided to phase out its nuclear power programme completely replacing it with renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power.

With the first Sunday of Advent we have entered the season of Newtomas with the latest edition of Whewell’s Gazette the weekly #histSTM links list bringing a sack full of seasonal histories of science, technology and medicine gathered up by the #histSTM elves in the recesses of the Internet over the last seven days.

It is also the season of books of the year list published by all the leading magazines and newspapers, nowadays mostly on the Internet. For the mass media books means literature with a capitol ‘L’, that is novels, biographies etc. and very little or no science or #histSTM.

As scientist and history of science author Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb) pointed out the two day Guardian book of the year list barely contained a handful of science and history of science books in a list of over three hundred titles.

Whewell’s Gazette doesn’t do a book of the year list but every week in our ‘book review’ and ‘new book’ sections we bring you all that we can find on new #histSTM publications, so if you’re looking for suitable seasonal presents just read your way through a years worth of our book sections and take your pick

Quotes of the week:

“Environmental history is the most boring kind of history. It’s very important, but unbelievably boring” – Zoya Siddiqi (@flouderingbear)

Jacquetta Hawkes, likely shown here at the excavation of Harristown Passage Tomb, County Waterford, Ireland, which she directed in 1939. Photographer unknown. Many thanks to Alison Cullingford, Special Collections Librarian at the University of Bradford, home to the Jacquetta Hawkes Archive, for supplying this photo. She also runs the blog Celebrating Jacquetta Hawkes.

]]>https://whewellsghost.wordpress.com/2016/11/29/whewells-gazette-year-3-vol-15/feed/1thonycCornelis Bloemaertcollectionsdarwin-quoteConversation in an Asian market, described in 1603 – Jonathan Healey (@SocialHistoryOx)newton-gravityvoltaire-quotegritterHenry G. J. Moseley in the Balliol-Trinity Laboratories, Oxford (1910). Source: Wikimedia CommonsCarl Benz 25 years old (1869) Source: Wikimedia Commons79179e0e95Image MIT MuseumAnders Celsius Source: Wikimedia Commons24 November in 1639, Jeremiah Horrocks recorded the 1st observation of the transit of Venus. Pic from Hevelius' 'Mercurius in Sole...' 1662 Wonderful illustration of the 1925 total solar eclipse – @AmericanEclipseHamilton standing next to the navigation software that she and her MIT team produced for the Apollo project. Source: Wikimedia CommonsVrihat Samrat Yantra is the world’s largest gnomon sundial. It measures time in intervals of two seconds using shadows cast from the sun.Heinrich Berann, [Jungfraubahn mountain railroad, Switzerland], 1939. British Library Maps 1060.(4.).Mary Ward Source: Wikimedia CommonsV0040054 A man wearing a skull cap and holding another cap in his han Credit: Wellcome Library, London.Illustrations of a male human skeleton and the skull of a male tiger in Osteographia, or The anatomy of the bones. William Cheselden, published London, 1733Today in Ladybird 21 Nov 1783 Montgolfier balloon rises 3000 feet with 2 passengers and travels 5 and a half milesThe original Eniac.The giant zeppelin Hindenburg, pictured in Lakehurst, New Jersey, was so big that its tail stuck out of the hanger built for it in Santa Cruz, near Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Photograph: AFP/Getty ImagesYou know antique microscopes are undervalued when.... James Hyslop (@astrolabe)tumblr_ogsbus1aia1tedol3o1_400Jacquetta Hawkes, likely shown here at the excavation of Harristown Passage Tomb, County Waterford, Ireland, which she directed in 1939. Photographer unknown. Many thanks to Alison Cullingford, Special Collections Librarian at the University of Bradford, home to the Jacquetta Hawkes Archive, for supplying this photo. She also runs the blog Celebrating Jacquetta Hawkes.wp_fax_of_a_woodcut_in_the_cosmographie_universelle_of_thevet_in_folio_paris_1574Recipe for gunpowder Vollenkommene Unterweisung/ (1660) h/t @nathanCharles-Adolphe WurtzSocrates and his Students, illustration from 'Kitab Mukhtar al-Hikam wa-Mahasin al-Kilam' by Al-Mubashir, Turkish School, (13th c) Photo by BridgemanFrom Georg von Welling’s (1652-1727) Opus mago-cabbalisticum et theosophicum, Saltzburgh, 1729.faraday-500x500-1501Werner and Elisabeth Heisenberg, Göttingen, Germany, circa 19469781107013384Plate LXVI from Johann Jakob Scheuchzer’s Physica Sacra (1731) Source: Wikimedia CommonsThe 26-metre Diplodocus skeleton is a museum icon and has been on display for more than 100 years. Found in Wyoming, USA.H.J. Elwes, A monograph of the genus Lilium, z.p., 1880Alchemists Revealing Secrets from the Book of Seven Seals, The Ripley Scroll (detail), ca. 1700. 950053chinese-woodblock-book_250Exhibition open 15 September 2016 through Summer 2017Gallica RosePoster-Final-crop-Cropped-719x392advert_2016_10_055836f9ea12aee-imagelectureAdmundson LectureJohannes Vermeer: The Geographerconferencecfp-kitchen-gardenscreative-history-2017-call-for-contributions2ichc-2017disability-cfpcolumbia-history-of-sciencealchemy-soundAPAkentTranforming Bodies CfPCFP Early Modern Worldglasgow-seminarscfp-kitchen-gardensichc-2017disability-cfpcolumbia-history-of-sciencealchemy-soundAPAkentTranforming Bodies CfPCFP Early Modern Worldglasgow-seminarsworkWhewell’s Gazette: Year 3, Vol. #14https://whewellsghost.wordpress.com/2016/11/23/whewells-gazette-year-3-vol-14/
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Your weekly digest of all the best of

Internet history of science, technology and medicine

Editor in Chief: The Ghost of William Whewell

Year 3, Volume #14

Monday 21 November 2016

EDITORIAL:

The world is going to hell in a bucket but we still bring you the latest edition of Whewell’s Gazette the weekly #histSTM links list with all the histories of science, technology and medicine that the tide swept up on the banks of the Internet over the last seven days.

In my other guise as the author of the Renaissance Mathematicus I have often blogged about the phenomenon of practitioners of science, who are not as well known as the deserve to be. This of course raises the question, who should actually be better known and why? A serious candidate is the seventeenth and early eighteenth century German scholar Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, the tercentenary of whose death was on 14 November. This led to 2017 being named Leibniz Year in Germany but even in the land of his birth this did not excite much interest outside of expert scholarly circles.

If English speaking people, who are not professional philosophers, have heard of Leibniz then most of them only because of his rather spectacular priority/plagiarism dispute with Isaac Newton over the invention/discovery (choose your term according to your preferred philosophy of mathematics) of the calculus. The term polymath is often abused but if anyone is a true polymath then it is Leibniz. Leibniz, for a large part of his life a professional librarian, was a philosopher, a mathematician, a historian, a physicist, an astronomer, a geologist, an inventor, a theologian, a diplomat, a psychologist, a lawyer, a logician, a linguist, a philologist, a palaeontologist, a biologist and a one man international communications hub whose correspondence contains 15 000 letters exchanged with 1100 correspondents. What is most important is that his contributions in a large number of these areas are anything but trivial.

He is alongside Newton one of the greatest mathematicians of the seventeenth century. The modern physics that emerged during the eighteenth century, whilst based largely on the works of Newton, also contains a substantial contribution from Leibniz. He invented a calculating machine, which although it never really functioned contains the stepped drum, Leibniz’s own invention, which would later become the heart of the first generation of commercially successful calculating machines. Leibniz is an important enlightenment philosopher, whose works are part of the European Philosophical cannon. I could go on but you should have got the general picture by now.

The real question is why this intellectual giant, and that is a description with little hyperbole, remains a name largely only known to experts. Even given this major anniversary I have only stumbled across a small handful of articles this week and the most of them are in German. However I hope it might encourage one or other of you to take a closer look at this fascinating scholar.

A last comment is that Leibniz is a serious candidate for the wearer of the most spectacular wigs in the early modern period. 1980’s glam metal hair is pathetic in comparison.

The Aegean Sea with the Cyclades islands. The islands of volcanic origin (shown in orange), including Santorini, form a line that follows the borders of two large tectonic plates. Image from the Physical Atlas by Heinrich Berghaus, published 1838-48. (Photo by David Bressan)

]]>https://whewellsghost.wordpress.com/2016/11/23/whewells-gazette-year-3-vol-14/feed/2thonycCornelis BloemaertGottfried Wilhelm Leibniz died 14 November 1716 Portrait by Christoph Bernhard Francke Source: Wikimedia CommonscartoonA new contender in my ongoing quest for 'Most supercilious, impossible to follow up old-school footnote' – Richard O’Brien (@notrockyhorror)Oil painting of Banting in 1925 by Tibor Polya, now in the possession of the National Portrait Gallery of Canada Source: Wikimedia Commonstumblr_inline_mvhii8ovbi1rkuju9google-doodle1916 photograph of Leo Hendrik Baekeland Source: Wikimedia CommonsWilliam Herschel 1785 portrait by Lemuel Francis Abbott Source: Wikimedia CommonsPortrait of Louis Daguerre (1787-1851) Source: Wikimedia CommonsdaguerreEdwin Hubble SourceDrawing by Maria Clara Eimmart (1676 – 1707)Giovanni Domenico Cassini’s floorplan of San Petronio, showing the meridian line. INTERNET ARCHIVE/PUBLIC DOMAINHawksbees Electrical Machine by Jean-Antoine Nollet Source: Wikimedia CommonsThe Island of CaliforniaFull-page portrait of Sir John Mandeville. Created 1459the-sevenSister M. Frida and researchers in the Pathology Laboratory, circa 1939. St. Joseph College of Nursing collection.Phlebotomy Man, The Physician’s Handbook: English medical and astrological compendium 1454, Credit: London, Wellcome Library, MS 8004, fol. 18r. License: CC BY 4.0. Students Standing at Attention at Albuquerque Indian School (ca. 1910)Leopold Auenbrugger and his wife Source: Wikimedia CommonsLighthouse keepers have always faced risks, but historical keepers faced a lot more of them. Photo by Phil Rees/Alamy Stock PhotoThe Silver Swan. Credit: The Bowes MuseumInteresting ad for "gullies" in late C19th asylum construction book "Stench, silth and grease traps" (@RCPSGlibrary) The Aegean Sea with the Cyclades islands. The islands of volcanic origin (shown in orange), including Santorini, form a line that follows the borders of two large tectonic plates. Image from the Physical Atlas by Heinrich Berghaus, published 1838-48. (Photo by David Bressan)Credit: Darren NaishSir Humphry Davy, Bt, by Thomas PhillipsWernher von Braun, one of the architects of the Apollo program, was a Nazi scientist brought to the U.S. in secret in 1945. (NASA/Marshall Space Flight Center) Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/why-us-government-brought-nazi-scientists-america-after-world-war-ii-180961110/#het5Y3MhLQraAXpQ.99 Give the gift of Smithsonian magazine for only $12! http://bit.ly/1cGUiGv Follow us: @SmithsonianMag on TwitterGrace Hopper working on the Harvard Mark I Source: Harvard GazetteAntonio Neri, 1598-1600, MS Ferguson 67, f. 25r.9781472414397978071235856920thcenturyin100mapsA cartoon depicting a man making fun of another who is being close-shaved, c1800. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)The 26-metre Diplodocus skeleton is a museum icon and has been on display for more than 100 years. Found in Wyoming, USA.H.J. Elwes, A monograph of the genus Lilium, z.p., 1880Alchemists Revealing Secrets from the Book of Seven Seals, The Ripley Scroll (detail), ca. 1700. 950053chinese-woodblock-book_250Exhibition open 15 September 2016 through Summer 2017Gallica RosePoster-Final-crop-Cropped-719x392Globe Exhibitionadvert_2016_10_05lecturelecture-iiAdmundson LectureSaraswati – the Indian Goddess of Wisdom, Knowledge, Learning, Music and Arts by Raja Ravi Varmacfp-kitchen-gardenshakluyt-essayichc-2017disability-cfpcolumbia-history-of-sciencealchemy-soundAPAkentHakluytTranforming Bodies CfPseminarsCFP Early Modern Worldglasgow-seminarsWhewell’s Gazette: Year 3, Vol. #13https://whewellsghost.wordpress.com/2016/11/15/whewells-gazette-year-3-vol-13/
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Your weekly digest of all the best of

Internet history of science, technology and medicine

Editor in Chief: The Ghost of William Whewell

Year 3, Volume #13

Monday 14 November 2016

EDITORIAL:

To be perfectly honest, given the events of the last week I didn’t see any point in continuing with this. It seems rather futile to publish a weekly #histSTM links list when the most powerful country in the world have just elected a crypto-fascist as their next president. But like that mythical orchestra on the Titanic, Whewell’s Gazette will in the face of disaster continue to bring you all of the histories of science, technology and medicine produced in the Internet over the last seven days.

Only a very small number of the elements, the building blocks of all matter, are named after scientist but two of these are named after women Curium named after Marie Curie and Meitnerium named after Lise Meitner. By a strange twist of fate both of them were born on 7th November, Curie in 1867 and Meitner in 1878.

Both of these remarkable women carved out scientific careers in a time when it was still extremely difficult for women to get an advanced education let alone one in the sciences. Both of them fought against prejudices based on their sex and in Meitner’s case her religion, she was Jewish. However despite all of the problems they faced both succeeded in establishing themselves as major scientific figures in the twentieth century.

Interestingly both of them worked on the boundary between chemistry and physics and both made major contributions to the development of the atomic age in which we now find ourselves. Curie in that she isolated and identified previously unknown radioactive elements and she, in fact, coined the term radioactivity. Meitner explained the mechanism of nuclear fission. In another interesting parallel both women worked in X-ray units during the First World War.

Both women received much recognition and many honours for their work, although only Curie received the Nobel Prize, and is the only person to receive two Nobel Prizes in two different scientific disciplines, physics and chemistry.

Quotes of the week:

“Ignoring a historian about history is like ignoring a mechanic about an engine fault. You can do it, but you aren’t gonna like the result” – Chris Kluwe (@ChrisWarcraft)

Brexiteer: We can go it alone! We are the country of Newton, Nightingale, Austen, Crick, Hawking, Brunel.

Also: we don’t like experts – Prof Patrick McGhee (@ProfMcGhee)

“The dispute over the correct plural of “referendum” will tear our society apart.

This is why there *must never* be another referendum” – Law and Policy (@Law_and_policy)

“If I keep writing ‘shitstory’, does this mean that my fingers are tired or is someone trying to tell me something?” – Matt Smith (@mpcsmith)

“..the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear” – Antonio Gramsci h/t @telescoper

The image shows the phases of the moon in a month. This is a page taken form a calendar prepared by Sayyid Ahmed b. Mustafa Al-La’li, who presented this calendar to the Sultan Selim II in 1566. Source: The courtesy of Sam Fogg – London.

L0071319 Horoscope of Prince Iskandar.Credit: Wellcome Library, London. Wellcome Imagesimages@wellcome.ac.ukhttp://wellcomeimages.orgHoroscope of Prince Iskandar, grandson of Tamerlane, the Turkman Mongol conqueror. This horoscope shows the position of the heavens at the moment of Iskandar’s birth on 25th April 1384.This is a fly leaf from the personal horoscope of Iskandar Sultan (died 1415), grandson of Timur, who ruled the province of Farsin, Iran. He is best known for his early military career and his patronage of the arts and sciences.Apart from being a horoscope, this manuscript is an exquisite work of art and an exemplary production of the royal kitabkhana ‘publishing house’ or ‘workshop’. The manuscript of 1411 is lavishly illustrated and reflects the efforts of a whole range of specialists: astronomers (among them Imad ad-Din Mahmud al- Kashi), illuminators, gilders, calligraphers and craftsmen, and specialists in paper-making.The manuscript was bought in Iran in 1794 by John H. Harrington, who had started his career as a clerk in the East India Company. In 1932, it was auctioned at Sotheby’s and bought for £6/15d by Sir Henry Wellcome who added it to his collection of Oriental books and manuscripts.813/1411 Wellcome MS Persian 474Published: –Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons Attribution only licence CC BY 4.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

]]>https://whewellsghost.wordpress.com/2016/11/15/whewells-gazette-year-3-vol-13/feed/0thonycCornelis Bloemaertgould-quotehuxley-quoteLise Meitner in 1906 Source: Wikimedia CommonsMarie Curie 1903 Nobel Prize portrait Source: Wikimedia Commonscurie-quoteWoodcut portrait of Benjamin Bannaker (Banneker) in title page of a Baltimore edition of his 1795 Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia Almanac Source: Wikimedia CommonsMartianus Capella's geo-heliocentric astronomical model dsc00649The image shows the phases of the moon in a month. This is a page taken form a calendar prepared by Sayyid Ahmed b. Mustafa Al-La'li, who presented this calendar to the Sultan Selim II in 1566. Source: The courtesy of Sam Fogg - London.Lewis Evans, Map of the Middle British Colonies (OS-1755-11)scottinfluenza-hospital-1-750x410Elizabeth Grey, A Choice Manuall. Frontispiece of 1671 edition.Anne Louise McIlroyThe effects of liquid chloroform on Simpson and his friends. PIC Wellcome Library, London/Creative Commons. Read more at: http://www.scotsman.com/news/the-drug-induced-edinburgh-dinner-parties-that-revolutionised-medicine-1-4280383drebblein-heron-sqTop, from left to right: Kathy Kleiman, Jean Bartik, Marlyn Meltzer, Kay Antonelli Bottom: Betty HolbertonHydraulic musical organ powered by a hand-pump from Hero’s Pneumatika. Burney MS 108, f. 60v. Italy, N. (Venice?), 1st quarter of the 16th century.wallace-geology-quoteIn 1577, Flemish artist Jan Wierix engraved Three Beached Whales, which depicts three stranded sperm whales.John D. Roberts at M.I.T. in 1947. He played a crucial role in the explosive growth of physical organic chemistry, a field that studies the reactivity of biological compounds. Credit M.I.T. downloadFemale role models in science and engineeringL0071319 Horoscope of Prince Iskandar. Credit: Wellcome Library, London. Wellcome Images images@wellcome.ac.uk http://wellcomeimages.org Horoscope of Prince Iskandar, grandson of Tamerlane, the Turkman Mongol conqueror. This horoscope shows the position of the heavens at the moment of Iskandar's birth on 25th April 1384. This is a fly leaf from the personal horoscope of Iskandar Sultan (died 1415), grandson of Timur, who ruled the province of Farsin, Iran. He is best known for his early military career and his patronage of the arts and sciences. Apart from being a horoscope, this manuscript is an exquisite work of art and an exemplary production of the royal kitabkhana 'publishing house' or 'workshop'. The manuscript of 1411 is lavishly illustrated and reflects the efforts of a whole range of specialists: astronomers (among them Imad ad-Din Mahmud al- Kashi), illuminators, gilders, calligraphers and craftsmen, and specialists in paper-making. The manuscript was bought in Iran in 1794 by John H. Harrington, who had started his career as a clerk in the East India Company. In 1932, it was auctioned at Sotheby's and bought for £6/15d by Sir Henry Wellcome who added it to his collection of Oriental books and manuscripts. 813/1411 Wellcome MS Persian 474 Published: - Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons Attribution only licence CC BY 4.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Deception of breathtaking proportions … Dr James Barry. Photograph: Oneworld Publications51n4f9jg97l-_sx332_bo1204203200_Leavitt CraterH.J. Elwes, A monograph of the genus Lilium, z.p., 1880Alchemists Revealing Secrets from the Book of Seven Seals, The Ripley Scroll (detail), ca. 1700. 950053chinese-woodblock-book_250Exhibition open 15 September 2016 through Summer 2017Gallica RosePoster-Final-crop-Cropped-719x392Globe Exhibitionadvert_2016_10_05event-stslecture-ad-iiAdmundson LectureNorman Rockwell Perpetual Motion 1920boston-colloquiumcfp-kitchen-gardenshakluyt-essayichc-2017advertdisability-cfpcolumbia-history-of-sciencealchemy-soundAPAkentHakluytTranforming Bodies CfPseminarsCFP Early Modern Worldglasgow-seminarsWhewell’s Gazette: Year 3, Vol. #12https://whewellsghost.wordpress.com/2016/11/09/whewells-gazette-year-3-vol-12/
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Your weekly digest of all the best of

Internet history of science, technology and medicine

Editor in Chief: The Ghost of William Whewell

Year 3, Volume #12

Monday 07 November 2016

EDITORIAL:

The year marches on and Whewell’s Gazette, the weekly #histSTM links list, marches with it bringing you once again all the histories of science, technology and medicine that we could scare up out of the dark recesses of cyberspace over the last seven days.

As a quick survey of our rubrics clearly shows we don’t regard #histSTM as being just confined to the written page, whether that page be old fashioned paper or actual digital, but acknowledge that aspects of #histSTM can be found in almost every medium. One particularly interesting aspect for many #histSTM fans is #histSTM exhibitions and we would like to draw your attention to two particular exhibitions featured in our Art and Exhibitions rubric.

Installation view of On Time: The Quest for Precision. Books on Time and Timekeeping from the Linda Hall Library at the Grolier Club (photo by the author for Hyperallergic) [See review below]

For our other featured exhibition you will need to cross the ocean to London and go to the British Library, where the cartographic exhibition “ Maps and the 20th Century: Drawing the Line” has just opened and will there to fascinate you, and who isn’t fascinated by maps, until 1 March 2017. Like the history of timekeeping the history of cartography has wound its way through the histories of both science and technology for several millennia. The British Library exhibition takes a look at the last hundred years of that history:

We have selected 200 maps from our collection of 4 million maps, supplemented by a handful of crucial loans) in order to showcase their technological development, their increasing variety, and what they meant to 20th century western society.

“I love Zizek, he keeps alive the Ancient Greek tradition that a philosopher is an annoying dick with a beard who’s wrong about everything” – the dicks lesbian (@AliceAvizandum)

“Zizek and the other contrary manbabies making me so glad I managed to grow out of the teen ‘want to shock’ phase. how embarrassing not to. Imagine living your whole life unable to believe you mattered unless someone was mad at you, or you’d at least made them unhappy” – Vanessa H (@HPS_Vanessa)

Charles Wheatstone’s Universal TelegraphThe world’s first electric telegraph made for ordinary people to usein their offices, workplaces and homes; the first instrumentto interconnect private subscribers through hubs or exchanges.Patented in 1858, perfected by Augustus Stroh in 1863

October closes out and November the season mists and mellow fruitfulness slips into its place bringing with it the latest edition of Whewell’s Gazette the weekly #histSTM links list containing within it all of the histories of science, technology and medicine that we could scare up from the four corners of the Internet over the last seven days.

A couple of days ago the following tweet made the rounds on Twitter:

No women ever invented an atomic bomb, built a smoke stack, initiated a Holocaust, melted the polar ice caps or organized a school shooting – Michael Moore (@MMFlint)

And yes it is that Michael Moore, documentary filmmaker, Cannes Film Festival prize winner and self appointed left wing conscience of the US. Now you might well ask why we are featuring this tweet in our editorial this week. The answer to this question is very simple and is provided by one of the editorial principles of Whewell’s Gazette.

There are an increasing number of historians, sadly nearly all female (come on men get in on the act), who have dedicated themselves to increasing the profile of the role that women have played in the histories of STEM and continue to play in its present and future. Whewell’s Gazette has always supported these endeavours and so long as we exist will continue to do so. So what has this got to do with Michael Moore’s tweet?

In the real world little girls are not made of sugar and spice and all things nice and the women that they grow up into aren’t either. Women like men are capable of doing much that is good but also equally capable of much that is evil. Implying that no woman was involved in the bad things in this world Michael Moore is not doing them a favour but reducing them to some sort of half human fable creatures.

Two of the leading female physicists of the twentieth century, Marie Curie and Lise Meitner, both did work that was essential to the development of the atomic bomb and numerous women worked on the Manhattan Project, not only as secretaries but also as engineers and scientists. In civil engineering there have been and continue to be many female architects and engineers and I’m certain that more than one of them has built a smoke stack. Although I can’t name a women who initiated a Holocaust many of the SS guards in the Nazi concentration camps were women and let us never forget Lynndie England notorious torturer of Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. There are also female executives running major fossil fuel companies, which contribute to the melting of the ice caps. On his last point I recommend that Mr Moore listens to the Boom Town Rats biggest hit, and the song that made them a world wide phenomenon, I Don’t Like Mondays, the true story Brenda Anne Spencer, who fired at children in a school playground at Grover Cleveland Elementary School in San Diego, California, US on 29 January 1979, killing two adults and injuring eight children and one police officer. (Info from Wikipedia)

Whilst it is true that more men tend to be involved in the production of evil in this world it is a mistake to pretend that women are some sort of innocent angels incapable of such things. If we truly want equality for women, and here at Whewell’s Gazette we do, then we have to accept and acknowledge both the good and the bad.